$1.25M In Cocaine Seized On The Way To NYC: Prosecutors

New York City NY

01 March, 2022

1:44 PM

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NEW YORK CITY — A tractor-trailer truck stopped in Virginia carried a 110-pound haul of cocaine intended for New York City's streets, prosecutors said. Jose Delacruz, 57, of the Bronx, faces a major drug trafficker and conspiracy charges filed this week in Manhattan Supreme Court. Delacruz's arraignment Tuesday followed a probe stretching hundreds of miles and a wiretap that resulted in the seizure of cocaine valued at roughly $1.25 million, prosecutors said. "This investigation prevented more than 100 pounds of cocaine from reaching our city, where lethal mixtures of narcotics are leading to record high numbers of overdose deaths," said Bridget G. Brennan, the city's special narcotics prosecutor, in a statement. Investigators listened into phone calls between Delacruz and his cousin Luis Delacruz in September and October, authorities said. The cousins spoke in code about a "pick up" headed to a "warehouse," authorities said. On Oct. 6, Luis Delacruz talked about a "girl" — which prosecutors claimed was code for "cocaine," authorities said. "Saturday, be on the alert as to where I can make a stop at one of those locations, and you can go in a cab and pick up the girl," Luis Delacruz said in a quote from court documents included in a prosecutors' release. "Not a problem. Let's do it that way," Jose Delacruz said, according to the release. Rockbridge County Sheriff's Office deputies in Virginia later stopped Luis Delacruz as he walked from the cab of a tractor-trailer, authorities said. They found two duffle bags stuffed with 50 kilograms, or roughly 110 pounds of cocaine, prosecutors said. Authorities in January raided Jose Delacruz's apartment in the Bronx, where they found $24,600 in cash, a kilo press often used to shape drugs into bricks and a money counter, prosecutors said. They didn't find drugs, but a hidden trap compartment under the bathroom floor had a "strong odor of cocaine," a release states. Agents and officers from Brennan's Special Investigations Bureau, the DEA's New York Division, NYPD and Homeland Security Investigations New York arrested Jose Delacruz on Jan. 11, authorities said.